


Still I'll Rise

by thepointoftheneedle



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Mild Smut, Toni Topaz on a mission, the blue and gold office couch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24555352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointoftheneedle/pseuds/thepointoftheneedle
Summary: Betty and Jughead in detention?  What can they have done to incur the wrath of Principal Honey?  Things are only getting more trying for Holden.  I've only gone and written Toni a storyline!
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 18
Kudos: 55





	Still I'll Rise

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope that this isn't disrespectful. I wanted to write but I can't just write in a vacuum and ignore what's going on. However I need to believe that things can get better. If someone wiser and better informed than me thinks that what I have written is trivialising, tell me and I'll take it down.
> 
> I quote a history textbook here...yes it's real. Think on that! You MUST know the poem. If you don't, then you honestly should go and put that right immediately. What have you been doing all week? It's Maya Angelou.

Saturday detention, the most cruel and unusual punishment yet devised by an educator. Jughead was not unfamiliar with the routines and rituals. There had been a time when he had sought it out as a warm, dry respite from the chaos of the trailer or the bone chilling cold of the projection booth but these days he had better things to do with his time. He glanced over at his girlfriend, a detention virgin. She was mortified both by her current status as a delinquent in need of punishment and by the misdemeanour that had landed them here. The look of horror on Miss Bell’s face when she pushed open the door of the Blue and Gold with her telephone message from the school board was burned onto both their retinas. Finding the girl most likely to succeed refastening her bra as the notorious ruffian and hoodlum Jughead Jones watched with a blissed out expression on his face, lounging on the office couch was a shock from which she would probably never recover. 

Betty had known she should control herself but they had been working so closely on the story, him standing behind her, reading over her shoulder, his breath warm on her neck. She could feel his chest against her back and she just couldn’t stop herself from pushing her backside out, brushing against his jeans, hearing him hiss with surprise and then exhaling a long, trembling breath as his body responded to hers in the way it always did. “Betts, that’s cruel if you aren't going to follow through,” he protested softly into her hair, pressing hot, open mouthed kisses wherever he could access her skin around the neckline of her sweater.

“Who says I’m not going to follow through?” She turned around, perching on the desk and kissing him with all the passion that she felt for her clever, serious, beautiful boyfriend.

“What here? I haven’t even…I haven’t got a condom Betts. We’re at school for God’s sake.”

“No-one but us comes in here Juggie. We don’t have to…do everything but I can help you… with this.” She stroked her hand against the front of his jeans, smiling when she felt how hard he was for her. Again he sucked in a breath between his teeth but this time there was a whine of desire too and it made her want him with such a fury that her fingers were on his zipper before she even knew what she was doing. If Miss Bell had been ten minutes earlier she would have been even more shocked and traumatised.

The interview with Principal Honey that followed Miss Bell’s report against them was definitely one of the most embarrassing experiences of Jughead’s life. He very much wanted to take the blame, to get Betty off the hook but what could he say? He tried to improvise a story about a spider falling into the neck of Betty’s sweater but Honey simply raised an eyebrow and he fell silent. Betts took charge as she often did in a crisis. “OK Principal Honey. You got us. We’ll apologise to Miss Bell. You must have had hormones once too. It won’t happen again. Now can we just move on and forget this ever happened?”

“No Miss Cooper we cannot. Your behaviour was lewd and indecent. You need to learn that it will not be tolerated. You and Mr Jones will attend Saturday detention and, since you are clearly experts, you will also prepare and deliver a peer mentor sex ed talk for the freshman class next week. Understood?”

She would have protested if Jug hadn’t muttered “Understood,” and dragged her out of there. Once Honey had decided on a course of action there was no point arguing. She’d just make it worse. So Saturday detention followed by an hour of ritual humiliation a la Lord of the Flies with the freshmen next week and then they could forget the whole sordid incident. He very much hoped that it wouldn’t put any kind of damper on Betty’s sexually experimental impulses because he was getting to like those a whole lot.

So, Saturday arrived and out of habit they sat in their usual seats in the English classroom that was reserved for detention. The door flew open, swinging back against the wall and there stood Toni, pink hair in braids, huge combat boots and an attitude of fizzing anger. “What’s up Topaz?’ Jug said in the low key greeting that they both favoured.

“Jones. Didn’t expect to see you here. And certainly not you Ponytail. What the hell would land you two in Saturday de…” She stopped and looked from one of them to the other in dawning realisation. “Oh, no, you didn’t? Really? You horndog Jones.”

Betty stepped in to try to change the focus of the conversation.”What’re you in for Toni?”

“Destruction of school property,” Toni said, blankly. “I tore up my history textbook in Howitzer’s class. So, a month of Saturday detentions.”

“OK. Was it more boring than usual?” Jughead was laughing.

“It’s not about that Jones. It was just about as racist as it always is. Here, I’ve got a quote for you…” She rummaged in her backpack for a sheaf of papers and read aloud, ““a few slaves never felt the lash, many may not have even been terribly unhappy with their lot, for they knew no other.” And that’s about it. Black history is reduced to just being the history of slavery and slavery is apparently fine once you get used to it. Fuck that. So I tore it up.”

“Wait, was this the big book with the dark red cover?” Betty asked.

“Yeah, A History of the United States.”

“Oh my god, I had that book for History. That’s awful. Why didn’t I notice that?”

“Well Ponytail, that’s a question isn’t it? Not one for me to answer though. You need to think on that.”

“Yeah but tearing it up Toni. I mean it’s a crappy book but it’s still a book.” Jug never even turned down the corners of a book to mark his page so the thought of tearing one up seemed to provoke a visceral reaction in him. “You should just tell Howitzer why it’s bad and maybe suggest something better. Or you could write to the school board. Betts has a contact there, don’t you Betts.”

“Well thanks for that white knight. You’re a regular Sir Launcelot aren’t you? I’d never have thought of those options on my own.”

At that moment Professor Flutesnoot made an appearance and took attendance. “You’re all seniors, right?” They nodded. “Well, I have no intention of babysitting you. If you plan to graduate even after your misbehaviour you must have assignments to work on. I’ll check back in shortly. Don’t make me come in here and tell you to be quiet.” He disappeared within two minutes of his arrival. 

“So are you saying you already contacted the school board Toni?”

“Yeah, called, emailed, wrote. “School budgets do not allow for replacement of textbooks before the end of their useful employment.” I told them that these books were at the end of their useful employment. Like I said to them, after the collapse of the Third Reich you wouldn’t keep on using the Nazi textbooks. They said that was a false analogy but I don’t see why. And it’s not just History. What about Art class? All those paintings of milky skinned girls, some creepy white dude getting hard over them. That all is your culture, not mine. Where’s my art? And English, don’t even get me started.”

“But we did “Beloved” Toni. And we read Sojourner Truth “Ain’t I A Woman?” that time.”

“Listen to yourself Betty. What are you saying there?”

Betty stopped and thought, gradually looking more and more uncomfortable. “Well I guess that I’m saying that I thought that because I read a novel and a letter that I understand black people’s experience. That I could read a million different books by white writers and get something different from every single one but black people’s lives are summed up in those two works. Oh my god Toni, am I a racist?”

Toni softened her expression. “OK, your boyfriend here.” Now it was Jug’s turn to look uncomfortable. “Is he a misogynist? Is he a sexist piece of shit?”

“No, of course not. He’s a good guy. You are Juggie. I mean, he gets it wrong sometimes. Like he assumes that I’m having my period when I’m just in a shitty mood and he thought that I’d like The Notebook because I’m female when I actually prefer Night of the Living Dead. But that’s just because he didn’t know that girls can like horror movies and feel grouchy, just because.” 

“OK, so maybe you might say a racist thing because you don’t know better. Like he might say a sexist thing. But he only becomes a sexist when he doesn’t learn from his mistake. So if he keeps insisting you watch The fucking Notebook when you told him that it’s not your thing then he’s a sexist. Or if he doesn’t bother to educate himself about how to do better then he’s a sexist. So you have some racist ideas because that’s the culture that you’ve been raised in. Now, do better, that’s your line isn’t it? We have to do better? Well you have to do better.”

Betty sat back into her seat, chastened and thoughtful while Toni took her seat and brought out a book. Jug looked over with a quizzical expression. “It’s just, Jug, we’ve been complaining about how tough high school has been for us. Gangs and crimes and dysfunctional families and all of it. And all along Toni’s been dealing with all that and on top of it this racist crap too. I can’t even imagine.”

“I know Betts. But what can we do about that? I don’t think we can put all that right can we?”

“No. But we can ask Toni what she’d like us to do, maybe help her get her message across on this.”

When Professor Flutesnoot came back to check on them just before lunch they were working hard. Betty and Jughead had Biology textbooks out and were trying to work out ways to talk to freshmen about genitalia and not instantly die of embarrassment and Toni was working on a photography portfolio for her college admission interview. There was a slight smell of smoke but he assumed that was the cigarette smell that always hung about Jughead Jones. It was also rather warm in the room and when he put a hand on the radiator it seemed very hot for a warm weekend in April. In the basement the furnace blazed like an inferno, paper and cardboard covers being consumed into ash, books at the end of their useful employment, needing replacement.

The following week the whole senior class was unruly, disruptive, difficult to control. In ones and twos and threes they trooped through Principal Honey’s office. Reggie had driven his hot rod into the quad, damaging the flower beds on the way, Veronica perched on the hood like the spirit of ecstasy. Archie had taken over the PA to treat the whole school to a rendition of The Times They Are A Changing which had caused some trauma to lower classes. Cheryl had led the Vixens in a routine of such breathtaking inappropriateness at the game that he had had to cover his eyes. He suspected that Jones and Cooper had somehow made away with a complete set of almost new History textbooks. Even Ethel had been insubordinate; when he asked her to record the PTA meeting using the AV club equipment somehow on the film whenever he spoke his voice sounded like the teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoons. Soon there were so many in Saturday detention that he had to move the location to the cafeteria. Ms Burble still signed up for the overtime to supervise them despite the disconcertingly high numbers. He hoped that he wasn’t losing the ability to run a tight ship.

When he arrived at school on Monday morning it was to find a news team from the local TV station carrying equipment from their van, led by the frankly terrifying Smith woman and followed by the ex Mayor. He rushed to Miss Bell to find out what fresh hell awaited him. She told him that there had been some graffiti in the cafeteria over the weekend. Ms Burble had reported it and said that all was in order when she had locked up after Saturday detention. Principal Honey’s heart raced. “Is it obscene Miss Bell?”

“Well no, that’s the odd thing. It’s quite lovely. A poem. I don’t know who rang the TV people but they were here, unpacking as soon as I arrived. Apparently there will be a report on the evening broadcast. Do you want me to ring Sheriff Jones to remove them?” He felt outmanoeuvred. Jones wouldn’t act against the Smith woman, they were living together for God’s sake. Time to plan strategy. He would have to go and look at the damage. As he made his way to the scene of the crime he passed many of the senior class. He couldn’t help notice that many of them seemed to have paint in their hair and on their hands.

Even though Miss Bell had used the word “lovely” he was surprised by what he saw. In swooping beautiful calligraphy a poem swirled around the walls. Alongside and around the words were vines and flowers, stars and flames, all rendered in graceful lines and soft colours. He recognised the words, naturally, and the artistic style was so distinctive of Toni Topaz that it could not be more obvious if she had signed it. “Well played Ms Topaz,” he whispered under his breath. Perhaps it was fitting after all that the young black woman should win this skirmish, perhaps the days of white male power were numbered and he might just need to get used to that fact. He turned to Alice Smith as she finished interviewing Ms Keller about the importance of Maya Angelou in contemporary culture, plastering a broad smile over his face. “Ms Smith, I’m so pleased that you are here to celebrate the creativity of the Saturday Art Club. It’s a breath of fresh air is it not, young people’s desire to create?”

Around them the words whirled like news of the coming age. 

You may write me down in history  
With your bitter, twisted lies,  
You may trod me in the very dirt  
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?  
Why are you beset with gloom?  
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells  
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,  
With the certainty of tides,  
Just like hopes springing high,  
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?  
Bowed head and lowered eyes?  
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,  
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?  
Don't you take it awful hard  
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines  
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,  
You may cut me with your eyes,  
You may kill me with your hatefulness,  
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?  
Does it come as a surprise  
That I dance like I've got diamonds  
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame  
I rise  
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain  
I rise  
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,  
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear  
I rise  
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear  
I rise  
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,  
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.  
I rise  
I rise  
I rise.


End file.
